URI
ANNOUNCES NEW EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
The United
Religious Initiative (URI) is pleased to announce Victor Kazanjian as
its new Executive Director. Kazanjian will assume the position on October 15,
after two decades serving Wellesley College as Dean of Religious and Spiritual
Life, Co-Director of the Peace & Justice Studies Program and most recently
Dean of Intercultural Education.
“The United
Religions Initiative community in 86 countries of the world enthusiastically
welcomes Victor Kazanjian as our Executive Director and looks forward to his
leadership and friendship,” said William Swing, President and founder of the
United Religious Initiative.
Victor Kazanjian
himself is looking forward to joining the URI community. “It is a great honor
for me to have been chosen as Executive Director of the United Religions
Initiative. I am very excited to be a part of the URI team as we work together
to build peaceful communities and engage problems of injustice and violence by
supporting interfaith cooperation and understanding. One of the things that I
have admired most about URI over the years is its commitment to a collaborative
process of shared leadership that supports grassroots efforts to empower
diverse groups of people of different beliefs and practices to transform their
communities and the world. At a time when religion is often seen to be at the
root of division among people, URI stands out as a beacon of hope for the
possibilities for peace,” said Kazanjian.
Global Council
Chair Kiran Bali extends the council’s support. “I am absolutely delighted to
welcome Victor Kazanjian as our esteemed Executive Director of URI. Victor is a
real asset to URI bringing his extensive experience, leadership and high regard
in the field of international interfaith cooperation. I look forward to
working in partnership with Victor and our URI community to further strengthen
our initiatives through the exciting times that lay ahead.”
Kazanjian’s work
at Wellesley College is widely acknowledged as the catalyst in a movement
to include religious diversity and spirituality as core issues in higher
education nationally and internationally, and has led to new models of
interfaith and intercultural growth and understanding. Specializing in
interreligious and intercultural conflict transformation, diversity and
democracy, and grassroots peacebuilding, Kazanjian is a recognized
thought-leader and the co-author of several books, includingEducation as
Transformation: Religious Pluralism, Spirituality and a New Vision for Higher
Education in America, (New York: Peter Lang, 2000), Beyond
Tolerance: a Campus Religious Diversity Kit,(Washington: NASPA, 2004) and
co-editor of the Studies in Spirituality and Education series published
by Peter Lang Press.
In 1998
Kazanjian co-founded Education as Transformation, an international organization
working with colleges and universities around the world to promote religious
pluralism and spirituality in education. He is also a visiting faculty member
and Fulbright Scholar at the Malaviya Center for Peace Research at Banaras
Hindu University in Varanasi, India, and the creator of Wellesley College’s
Wintersession program in India.
Victor Kazanjian
is an ordinated priest in the Episcopal Church and holds a Master of Divinity
degree from the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is
also a graduate of Harvard University.
Victor Kazanjian
Dean
of Intercultural Education and Religious and Spiritual Life
Dean Kazanjian
supports Wellesley College’s commitment to educating students for national and
global citizenship by implementing an integrated co-curricular program of
intercultural and interreligious education that equips students with the
knowledge and skills they will need for leadership and life in a diverse and
interdependent world.
He provides
leadership for the new Office of Intercultural Education and has primary
responsibility for the development and leadership of intercultural education
activities, trainings, and programs that educate and promote awareness,
understanding, and appreciation of diversity and inclusion on campus, and
increasing multicultural competency throughout the campus community. He is the
founder of Wellesley's Multifaith Religious and Spiritual Life Program, which
seeks to respond to the rich diversity of beliefs represented among community
members through a vision of a multifaith community in which all particular
expressions of belief are celebrated; no one tradition is seen as normative;
and dialogue about common religious, spiritual, and ethical principles is
nurtured. This program provides support for people of all religious, spiritual,
and humanist traditions and builds community among people of diverse
backgrounds and working with faculty, staff, and students.
Dean Kazanjian
is also the co-founder and president of Education as Transformation, Inc., an
organization that works nationally and internationally with colleges,
universities, and educational institutions exploring issues of religious
pluralism and spirituality in higher education. As co-director of the Peace
& Justice Studies Program at Wellesley he teaches on issues of social
justice, conflict transformation, and community change, with a focus on race
and class in America, and diversity and democracy in the United States and
India.
Publications
Dean Kazanjian
writes and speaks regularly on issues of interreligious and intercultural
dialogue, developing multifaith and multicultural communities, spirituality and
education, leadership and learning, principles of peacemaking, diversity and democracy,
and social justice and institutional change. His recent publications include:
Books
·
Co-editor of Education as Transformation:
Religious Pluralism, Spirituality and a New
Vision for Higher Education
in America (New York: Peter Lang, 2000),
·
Co-editor of Beyond Tolerance: a Campus
Religious Diversity Kit (Washington: NASPA, 2004)
Articles
·
“Building a New Global Commons: Religious Diversity
and the Challenge for Higher Education,” in the Journal of
Inter-Religious Dialogue (Summer 2010)
·
“Design from Dialogue: Houghton Chapel and
Multifaith Center at Wellesley College,” in Faith & Form: The
Interfaith Journal on Religion, Art and Architecture (2009)
·
“Towards Multi-cultural Learning Communities” in
Building the Interfaith Youth Movement (New York: Alta Mira Press, 2006)
·
“Religion, Spirituality and Intellectual
Development,” in the Journal of Cognitive Affective Learning ,
Oxford College at Emory University, Summer, 2005.
